To Owners, 'The Book' Is A Classic, Too

July 03, 2000|By JIM SPENCER Daily Press

The plastic loose-leaf binder is an ugly, faded green. The hundreds of pages packaged inside are stiff and dry and turning parched brown on the edges. The words, however, remain legible and invaluable.

The binder contains the normal data about specifications - 312-cubic-inch engine, 245 horsepower, 9.7-to-1 compression ratio, "Fordomatic" automatic transmission, "Engine fuel requirement: premium." But the unabridged original service manual that Tommy Coleman found among the disassembled pieces of his and his wife's "new" 1957 Thunderbird has so much more.

Unlike the owner's manuals for modern cars, which seem starved of information so they can fit comfortably in a glove box, Coleman's T-bird guide can actually help you do things more complicated than changing wiper blades.

"When we got the car," said Coleman, "a lot of the wiring was pulled apart. The power windows were all disconnected. The book helped me trace connections for wiring the headlights and taillights and windows.

"It was a big help in rebuilding the brakes."

The manual could help whoever owned this car do just about anything he wanted to do. It's written in understandable language and liberally illustrated with diagrams and drawings of parts and how they fit together.

"The book," as Coleman calls it, takes away some of the mystery for a guy who's been rebuilding cars most of his life.

But for the most part the knowledge is a relief.

It's the kind of thing that makes you feel better when you're removing a 43-year-old radio from a dashboard, getting it cleaned and reinstalling it.

Or when you're removing the dashboard itself.

Even in the hands of a novice, "the book" transmits an aura of confidence.

Somehow it's reassuring to have a piece-by-piece schematic of your car, if for no other reason than to protect yourself from unscrupulous mechanics.